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by Lib Dem team on 15 February, 2012
Since the introduction of the extra wheelie bins about 15 months ago, Stockport residents have saved £5.2 million, with more to come. That’s big money and, tough as the Council cuts are, they would be a lot worse if our recycling was only as good as Manchester or Tameside.
How do we get those numbers?
For every tonne of paper, card, glass, cans etc. that we recycle rather than sending to landfill, we save £186.
For every tonne of green waste that we compost instead of sending to landfill, we save £107.
With 280,000 people in Stockport, that works out as a lot of tonnes over a year. In fact, we’ve diverted over 30,000 tonnes from landfill and our recycling rate is over 60% – making Stockport one of the top five recyclers in the whole country.
All that waste diverted from landfill, plus additional rebates we receive, adds up to £5.2 million!
6 Comments
The question I would like answering is this – how much does the infrastructure cost to collect all this recycling? You imply there is no cost.
Also the two Captcha words you have to input are sometimes
almost illegible!
No, there is a cost and the £5.2 million saving is after that cost has been paid for. We would be collecting rubbish whatever, so the main additional cost for Stockport is the one-off for all the extra wheelie bins.
Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority (GMWDA) runs the recycling centres like the facility at Longley Lane and nine Greater Manchester authorities pay into that.
As an incentive to recycle more, it was agreed that the more an authority recycles, the less it pays. That’s why we’ve had a £3 million rebate from the GMWDA this year and most other authorities haven’t received a penny back.
Only the purchase of the extra wheelie bins are a one-off as you have to have an infrastruture to support the collection of the blue, brown and blue bins. I ask once again how much does it cost the council to support these three collections and if we didn’t recycle anything what would be the cost/saving?.
As I said before, Bruce, the £5.2 million is the *additional saving* from the new bin infrastructure. If we didn’t recycle anything at all, the cost would be a lot more than £5.2 million, as that saving is against the 35% recycling rate we had reached previously.
Not recycling is a very expensive business!
The point here has been totally missed. It is about a cost in tax to the householder compared to the service we receive. I personally have had a reduction in refuse collection service of my general household waste. So let’s break down your savings. £5.2m saving may sound good, but this is for 120456 households in Stockport, or £43.17 per household per year. In the last year I will have spent more money taking my general waste to a council run tip in fuel and time than the £43.17 you have saved me.
Please put up my council tax bill by £43.17 and improve my bin collection. Or answer this, if the black bin was twice the size what additional cost would there be per household, as this is the extra I will pay, as I am sure there are still savings, and it would not cost an extra £43 per household.
Any household that needs a second black bin can have one for free. Large families just need to ask, smaller households need to show that they really need it (so we can be sure people aren’t just not bothering to recycle).